THE NEW YOR.KER. Senator said, 'I doubt that.' And the Governor said, 'Well, I can tell you now, Senator, since January seventh I've been in Albany thirty-eight days and you've only been here thirty-two days.' That's approximate-it was thirty-something and thirty-some- thing. Whereupon Anderson respond- ed, 'I doubt those numbers, Governor. As far as I'm concerned, I've been here forty-two days and you've only been here thirty-seven days' -or some numbers like that. And this is the Governor of the State of New York and the president pro tern of the Senate speaking. Well, it was downhill from there." The quarrel between Anderson and Carey was a spillover from their dis- pute over the Governor's "Medicaid pickup" proposal, which called for a state assumption of local govern- ments' share of Medicaid costs There was another potentially disruptive ele- ment in the Albany air: Carey's rela- tionship with a wealthy Chicago-based condominium converter named Evan- geline Gouletas, who was soon to be- come his First Lady. "To under- stand the events that were taking place, you have to understand that Carey was really in love," says Ralph Laws, the former secretary to the As- sembly Ways and Means Committee. "He was like a sixteen-year-old, and I say this with affection He was so hopelessly in love, so preoccupied with being in love, that his attention drifted. " After the meeting, Anderson laughed off the Governor's deadline and told a reporter, "If the Assembly passes the bill and sends it to us within forty-eight hours, we'll see what we can do." Even when Carey extended the deadline to a week, one legislative aide wondered if "the Governor has all his bricks on his truck." Eric Lane, counsel to the Democratic minority in the Senate, speculates that Carey, by invoking a "transit emergency," hoped for the same rush approval that had followed his initiatives in New York City's "fiscal emergency" of 1975. But, Lane adds, the Legislature had more knowledge and stronger feelings about transportation than about high finance. "No legislator worth his salt was going to be dictated to on that issue," he says. The debate quickly turned into a free-for-all, with questions, condi- tions, amendments, and condemna- tions coming in from all quarters. Some legislators wanted assurances that the subways would not get too 51 large a share of the money as against the commuter railroads. Some want- ed minority-hiring guarantees. Some wanted the bill to include highway and bridge repairs. Some simply wanted to scale everything down. U p- staters, of course, had not been ex- pected to back the M.T.A. plan, and by and large they didn't. But the most serious challenge came from down- state. Although Ravitch had worked closely on the capital program with Deputy Mayor Wagner and City Council Presi- dent Carol Bellamy, both _ of whom were members of =- the M.T.A. board , there h 1 - - -===;=t:.;:- had been no direct discus- -=- _::-':;9 sions with Mayor Koch. "I wasn't communicating too well with the Mayor at that point," Ravitch ex- plains. The Mayor, with the backing of the Senate minority leader, Man- fred 0 hrenstein, raised a formidable objection. He told the Times that he could not support the capital program unless he obtained, simultaneously, a long-term state commitment to keep transit fares from rising faster than the cost of living-a concept that would later be called, liltingly, the "Fair Fare" program. "If we don't get it, we will stop the W estway," he added. Ravitch's response was to say, "Let's look at these issues separately." Otherwise, he feared, upstate and Re- publican resistance to higher subsidies would compromise the capital pro- gram and possibly do it in. "Besides," he says, "in my heart of hearts, I knew the fare wasn't going to be addressed until the end of June anyway"-when the Legislature hoped to recess-"and I didn't want it to delay us." But in trying to divorce these questions Ra- vitch was up against more than the Mayor-he was up against the press. To reporters, editors, and headline writers, the fare was an irresistible subject. The Post, in its account of the Governor's March 2nd initiative, re- ported, "Top city and state officials yesterday criticized Gov. Carey's $5 billion mass-transit package, charg- ing it's an inadequate solution that would mean a 95-cent subway fare- at least-by 1984." (In a sidebar, the Post quoted Koch as saying, "I am not happy with the way the M.T.A. is going forward," and added that the Mayor "stopped short" of demanding Ravitch's removal.) On April 21st, a transit police offi- cer was wounded by a .22-calibre bul- let just outside Ravitch's offices at M. T .A. headquarters. Although the ,.... assailant failed to explain his purpose before he fled, it was widely assumed that he had been after the M.T.A. chairman. "ASSASSIN ON THE LOOSE," the Post proclaimed. The News, for its part, printed a floor plan of the area -"so that," Diane Ravitch specu- lates, "future assassins would be able to find their way around more easily." After the shooting incident, Ravitch continued to fly back and forth to Al- bany, but now he was given a police escort and, when he could tolerate it, wore a bullet- proof vest. There was an- other new touch to these trips, per haps of greater sig- nificance. Ravitch and his people were dealing less and less with the Governor's staff, and more and more with the Legislature. After the fracas over the forty-eight- hour deadline, relations between the two branches had degenerated further. Hung up on the Medicaid issue, prog- ress on the budget for fiscal 1981-82 came to a halt for more than a month. By early April, even indirect commu- nication between Carey and Anderson had been suspended John Kiernan, then the chief counsel and staff di- rector of the Senate Transportation Committee, recalls an M.T.A.-related meeting with members of the Gover- nor's staff on Palm Sunday night. "It was about one o'clock in the morn- ing," Kiernan says, "and the word came all of a sudden from Senator Anderson's office: 'That's it. Pack up. We're not talking' -because the Gov- ernor's staff had again reversed itself in the Medicaid business, and Ander- son's office took the position that we couldn't be talking to people who didn't follow through on commitments they had made." Ravitch continued to deal with the Legislature. But, wîth no sign that disagreements within the Legislature itself were subsiding, and with no par- ticipation from "the second floor"- the Governor's floor of the Capitol building-it was hard to say where the talk was leading. Equally omi- nous was the strange alliance forming in opposition to the fare-backed-bond concept-the instrument by which the M.T.A. hoped to assemble two bil- lion dollars of its rebuilding fund. Urban Democrats and transit advo- cacy groups had objected to the idea out of fear that huge fare increases would ultimately be required to repay the money. "The subway car you're funding with thirty-year bonds won't last thirty years," complained Donald n .